Incredibly Late-Period Penalties

Something has been on my mind for a while now, and I never really took the time to mention anything about it. Better late than never I guess. Anyway... A while back, something really irritated the hell out of me and I'm going to talk about it whether you like it or not.

May 10, 2009. I'm watching the Bruins and Hurricanes, who appeared to be getting increasingly hostile with each other as the game progressed, especially in the 3rd period. Hope for the Hurricanes to win the game was long gone at this point, I was just watching for kicks now. But late in the 3rd period, something happened. And by "late," I really mean late. There must have been 1-2 seconds left in the period, and subsequently, the entire game. A big hoo-ha breaks out, fists are flying everywhere, it's a slobberknocker on the ice, and to top it all off, Milan Lucic is sent off on a misconduct. As I'm sitting there, amused by the referees' temporary lack of ability to restrain the players, I realized, they stopped the clock. No biggie, right? Any other point in the game, it would indeed be no biggie. But this was the 3rd period, and there were 1-3 seconds left.
Simply put, I got to wait a few minutes until the puck dropped and the final 1-3 seconds were officially burned off the clock and Boston could tally up a win. I waited several minutes for a 1-3 second countdown.

This wasn't the first time my rage was aroused by a late-period penalty that forced a several minute-long waiting period before the final 3 seconds of a period or game could be officially counted down. It has happened before- not much, but it still happens nonetheless.

I don't know if this is normal, but I just don't understand why the clock has to be stopped to address a penalty... when there's 2 seconds left in the period. All it does is burn up time before the period inevitably ends. Maybe it's just me, but it would be much wiser (and time-saving) to wait until the period is over, and just carry over the penalty to the next period. Instead of starting the period on the powerplay for 1:59, why not make it the full 2 minutes? I know that may not seem like much of a difference. We'll all agree that it isn't. At all. But think about how much time it would save in the final seconds of the last period. Instead of burning up a minute or two for addressing the penalty, the clock isn't stopped, no time is wasted, and the penalty carries over to the next period in it's entirety. It may only save a minute or two, which isn't much, but it does spare the arousal of my anger, which would be flaring if the penalty had delayed the end of the period.

So that's my proposed solution to really, really, really, really late-period penalty calls.

But what if it's the 3rd period?

My proposal still stands. I just don't see a point in stopping the clock when there's 2 seconds left to send a player to the penalty box when they'll only spend 2 seconds there. I think it would make much more sense to just let the clock burn out and let the penalty go. It just wouldn't be worth it to keep him in the box and let play resume if it will last only 2 seconds. And it would save me plenty of unneccessary rage.